150 Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History (9 page)

77.
Foreign Policy Flip Flops

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama campaigned loudly against such Bush Administration policies as renditions and indefinite detention for terrorists. But, as president, he didn’t just retain these policies, he expanded them.
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Obama’s previous position may have been out of naiveté, or just a ploy to garner support from the Democratic Party’s liberal base, but, apparently, the realities of being Commander-in-Chief have trumped his rhetoric. Other times, unfortunately, his foreign policy flip-flops have not been in the best interests of our country, or our allies. Here are a few examples:

•
Obama forcefully promised as a candidate to recognize the 1915 Turkish genocide against the Armenian people, but, as president, Obama squashed congressional efforts to pass a resolution recognizing the genocide.
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•
In 2007, Obama stated that the president does not have the power to unilaterally authorize military action, but did not seek congressional approval for sending our troops to Libya.
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Early in his administration, Obama called Egyptian President Mubarak an ally and a “force for good.”
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When it became clear that Mubarak was in trouble, Obama did an about face and called for Mubarak to surrender power.
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•
Obama promised that his policies in foreign affairs would restore respect for the United States around the world. Actually, after four years of Obama, the United States is more unpopular than ever.
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•
Obama said that he would not turn a blind eye to the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, but has done absolutely nothing about it as President.
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He publicly claimed in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that the United States “will always have Israel’s back” but effectively retracted the statement a couple days later during a press conference.
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78.
The Benghazi Attack & Cover Up

There is much we don’t know about what happened on September 11, 2012 when the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya was attacked, along with the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. We know that in Benghazi, four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. Investigations are still on-going and we don’t have a comprehensive statement about what happened from Obama. But, there are some things about the Benghazi attack which cannot be doubted:

The attack was clearly carried out by terrorists linked to al Qaeda and this fact was known in the administration within hours of the attack.
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The claim that an obscure, allegedly anti-Islamic video was the cause of a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand was an outright lie, but the Obama Administration used the video connection as a talking point anyway.
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The murdered Ambassador in Benghazi had called repeatedly for additional security for our diplomatic posts in Benghazi.
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While Obama has refused to answer the question as to whether or not help for Benghazi was denied, plenty of evidence has surfaced indicating that someone in the Obama Administration denied requests for military assistance.
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Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has testified that he personally informed Obama the consulate was under attack, and didn’t speak again for another six hours, contradicting previous claims by Obama that he was fully engaged with the response.
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Obama’s former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has testified that she never read the cables from Libya insisting upon the need for greater security.
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Survivors of the attack are under federal gag order, preventing them from discussing or testifying about what happened.
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With the attack occurring two months before the presidential election, it’s quite clear that there was a concerted effort to cover up the details of what happened and steer blame away from Obama and his administration. What happened in Benghazi was preventable, and the cover up that followed was positively Nixonian.

An examination of Obama’s record on fighting terror reveals a man who seems more motivated by politics than a desire to protect the people of the United States. In fact, many actions taken in the War on Terror since Obama took office have been counterproductive.

79.
Killing bin Laden

It may seem odd that the killing of Osama bin Laden would be on these pages, but according to bestselling author and award-winning investigative journalist Richard Miniter, the killing of bin Laden was Obama’s greatest foreign policy
failure
. See, bin Laden’s body was not the only thing taken out of his lair, there were also papers, hard drives and thumb drives containing a mother load of intelligence. Included on those documents and devices, were, Miniter wrote, “the whereabouts of al Qaeda’s senior commanders, the secret sources of funds, its hideouts, its sleeper cells, its pending plots.”
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Miniter continued,

With a few weeks to translate and analyze those captured documents, the CIA and other services could have been providing actionable intelligence to guide commandos to the secret locations of al Qaeda leaders all over the world. With the element of surprise and clearly defined targets, nearly every al Qaeda leader could have been killed or captured.
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Had Obama not rushed to the cameras to announce to the world what happened and give himself credit, but instead waited a few weeks, al Qaeda could have been wiped out entirely.

A few weeks would have also given Obama administration officials more time to get their stories straight on the details of the raid. Different stories from various administration officials would later prove the point that if you just stick the truth you don’t have to remember the lies.
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There are other incidents surrounding the killing of bin Laden that are worth mentioning. Despite the White House narrative that Obama had made a “gutsy call,” in April of 2012, a memorandum was disclosed that proved otherwise. The memorandum, written by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, appeared to preemptively assign blame to the military had the raid been botched.
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There were also reports from White House insiders that Obama had originally hesitated to move forward with the raid, but was essentially “overruled” by military and intelligence officials who pressed Obama to go forward with it.

A former top general also claimed in May of 2012 that Obama knew of bin Laden’s location for nearly a year before the raid was given the green light.
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80.
Attempt To Prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed in the United States

Barack Obama had made it clear he wanted 9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators to be tried in the U.S. Federal court system. This was a terrible idea on many levels: Security costs would have been enormous, it would give terrorists a public platform to denounce America, and it could jeopardize intelligence sources. Despite these reasons, Obama, an outspoken critic of military tribunals, was determined to have a public trial in New York City.

The plan was so bad, that there was bipartisan opposition to the plan from Congress. New York City officials were also opposed to the plan.
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The administration did eventually reverse their policy. Not because they realized the error of their ways, but because Congress refused to provide the funds for a trial on American soil.
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81.
Desire To Close Gitmo

As a candidate starting in 2007, Obama promised that he was going to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Gitmo) as soon as he was elected. He promised it so many times that it was a given: both Obama’s supporters and opponents assumed that Gitmo was as good as closed as soon as a he could organize the closure. Opponents of this plan had many legitimate concerns and questions. Where would the prisoners go? How would they be tried? Where would we hold any terrorists captured after Gitmo was closed?

But, Obama was less concerned about the logistics and more concerned with fulfilling his promise. He signed an executive order on January 22, 2009 requiring Gitmo closed within one year.
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But, he was not able to carry out his own executive order because of opposition from Congress.

On January 3, 2013 Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which barred the use of federal funds to transfer Gitmo prisoners to the United States.
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While Obama claimed that Gitmo was a Gulag-style cesspit of abuse where innocent people were incarcerated at the whim of President Bush, the reality always was that Gitmo housed some of the most evil and dangerous men in the world. They were given regular meals and exercise time. They were also allowed to freely practice their religion—they were given Korans and allowed to pray five times a day.

Despite his failure to close Gitmo in his first term, Obama still hopes he can accomplish this is his second term.
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82.
Higher Casualty Rate In Afghanistan

Obama was in office for less than a month when he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize that he would eventually be awarded on December 10, 2009. He was awarded the prize, not for anything he’d actually done, but for what he
said
he’d do.

Among other things, Obama promised to bring our troops home. But, on several occasions, he actually sent
more
troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, and even to Turkey and Libya. While our troops were eventually pulled out of Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan has not improved, and arguably has gotten worse.

With Obama as
Commander-in-Chief
, casualties in Afghanistan increased dramatically. There were 570 U.S. military deaths in the just over seven years from the start of the campaign to Obama’s inauguration.
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On September 30, 2012, we reached 2,000 deaths.
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The Nobel Peace Prize winning Commander-in-Chief saw a nearly five-fold increase in the monthly casualty rate on his watch.

83.
Negotiating With Terrorists

In January 2012, the
New York Times
reported that “Several Taliban negotiators have begun meeting with American officials in Qatar, where they are discussing preliminary trust-building measures, including a possible prisoner transfer[.]”
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According to Judicial Watch, “As part of ‘Taliban reconciliation efforts,’ the terrorists would be transferred to Qatar, a Middle Eastern Arab state where [the Taliban] will soon open an office. The Obama Administration is selling the preposterous deal to Congress by saying that the prisoners won’t actually be released but rather transferred to the custody of the Qatari government and they will remain in jail.”
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With bipartisan opposition in Congress to the plan, the Obama Administration’s negotiations failed. Eventual peace talks are still in consideration. It seems rather strange that the Obama Administration would be willing to negotiate directly with a terrorist organization. Except that according to the State Department, the U.S. strangely does not consider the Taliban a terrorist group.
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84.
Giving Classified Information To Filmmakers

Prior to the 2012 election, it was revealed that the Obama Administration might have provided classified information to filmmakers behind
Zero Dark Thirty,
a film on SEAL Team Six’s raid on Osama bin Laden. The Obama Administration originally denied providing director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal classified information. It wasn’t until after the election that the Obama Administration admitted giving those details to the filmmakers, and that it could have caused an “unnecessary security and counterintelligence risk.”
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Ironically, when some Senators and Obama Administration officials were given an advance screening of the film, there were objections to the portrayals of enhanced interrogations (which Obama opposes) playing a key role in finding bin Laden.

85.
Dumb Luck Terror Strategy

After 9/11, there was a lot of uncertainty regarding whether our country would ever be attacked again. As years passed without a successful attack on the homeland, it was obvious that we had made progress in fixing the problems that made us vulnerable in the past. Under Obama, there have been some terrorist attempts that were not successful, but not because plots were foiled, but because of shear dumb luck.

A plot by al Qaeda leaders in Yemen to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 was carried out by Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, who had explosives sewn to his underwear. The attempt was nearly successful, but Abdulmutallab failed to detonate the explosives properly. He was subdued by passengers and arrested upon landing. This was a gross failure of the system. Abdulmutallab had been on a U.S. “terror watch list” and his own father had recognized his son’s radicalism and informed the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria alerting them that his son was a potential threat to the United States.
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Less than six months later, there was another close call with an attempted car bombing in Times Square. On May 10, 2010 two street vendors noticed smoke coming from a parked car in Times Square. The car bomb had been ignited but failed to explode. The bomb was disarmed and no one was hurt or killed. Faisal Shahzad, who had been trained at a Pakistani terror training camp, was arrested two days later. The plot was directed and financed by the Pakistani Taliban.
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The
Washington Times
reported in May 2010 that Shahzad “was on the Department of Homeland Security’s Traveler Enforcement Compliance System list as late as 2008. The Obama Administration
removed
him from that list. He also was under scrutiny of the national Joint Terrorism Task Force until the Obama administration waved it off the case.” Had Shahzad been a more competent terrorist, the Obama Administration would have had to answer a lot of question about their actions.

It was dumb luck that these two acts of terror didn’t succeed.

86.
Refusing to Acknowledge Terrorist Acts

Unfortunately, Obama’s dumb luck terror strategy didn’t always work out. Two terrorist attacks on U.S. soil were successful on Obama’s watch. The Fort Hood shooting on November 5, 2009, and the bombing of the Social Security building in Casa Grande, Arizona on November 30, 2012.

Obama couldn’t risk the political ramifications of having terrorist attacks on U.S. soil succeed on his watch, and the incidents were not classified as terror attacks, despite all the evidence that these were, in fact, acts of terror.

Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army major who shot and killed 13 people and wounded many others, had been in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born imam who had been under investigation by U.S. intelligence agencies for years.

In December of 2011, it was revealed that Obama’s Department of Defense had classified the shooting as “workplace violence.”
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Even Obama would not describe the shooting as terrorism.
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Abdullalltif Ali Aldosary, the Iraqi refugee who created a homemade explosive and bombed the Social Security building, had previously been denied U.S. citizenship for “terror-related activity.”

Aldosary had planned the bombing in advance, and had researched terrorist bombs. According to the criminal complaint, documents on how to build bombs were hidden behind a picture in his home, and he also tried to obtain information on how to create RDX, a powerful military high explosive, which has been used in many terrorist plots.
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Despite all this, Aldosary was not charged with terrorism. Instead, he was charged with “maliciously damaging federal property by means of explosives,” and with illegal possession of a firearm.
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Who benefited most by these events not being called and treated as acts of terror? Barack Obama. If the government doesn’t recognize a terror attack as a terror attack, than Obama could claim he kept the country safe from another attack on U.S. soil on his watch. But, calling it “workplace violence” or “damaging federal property” doesn’t change the truth of Obama’s record on domestic terrorism.

87.
Growth of al Qaeda

With a dismal record on the economy, Obama needed to trump up his foreign policy record while running for reelection. In addition to constantly claiming credit for killing bin Laden, he often repeated the claim that “al Qaeda is on its heels.”

You didn’t have to be a supporter of Obama to
wish
that were true, but the facts proved otherwise. Still, Obama propagated this falsehood as long as he could, but after al Qaeda was linked to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, reports of a comeback of al Qaeda in Iraq
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and North Africa,
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he had to drop it from his speech.